New Year's Day - 2009

2009 has come in with a cold blast. New Years Day is here and it is cold and bitter. We started the morning at the crack of dawn. Joy had told Hunter, who had wanted to go hunting this morning, that if he would let her stay in her warm bed, than he could shoot any deer that came to the feeder in the pasture. Now this seemed pretty safe at the time, as we had not been seeing any deer at the feeder for awhile, because it had run out of feed. But Hunter and I filled it with corn yesterday. So this morning when I looked out the window, there were at least 7 big does eating corn below the house. I woke up Joy and Hunter to see. Hunter grabbed the rifle and put some clothes on. We had to decide whether to go out the front door or onto the deck. We decided on the front porch. We slipped out onto porch and crawled to the end, slipping the gun barrels out between the rails of the porch. About this time, the does heard us begin to scurry off. I told Hunter to get ready and when the deer stopped at the edge of the woods, he took a shot. Off ran the deer with tails held high! Looked like a clean miss. We went back in. Hunter was shaking and upset. He had "Doe fever". He was unbelieving that he had missed. We watched for another hour and a half before going back outside. We walked down to where the doe was, looking for blood or hair. None.
"Hunter", I said, "Let's go and sight in our rifles". We had just put a new scope on Hunter's new rifle, a Ruger 77 in 220 Swift. I also got a new barrel for my Thompson/Center Encore in 25-06 which I had mounted a new scope. It also needed sighting in. We moved the picnic table around to the front yard and set up a target in the pasture. For sandbags, we used rice and sugar bags from the pantry! And even though it was mid morning, it was still bitter cold!

After quite a few rounds of shooting, we were finally able to get the guns sighted in at 100 yards. Now no excuses for missed deer! All the guns were shooting well and performing to expectations.

Now just to get it all back inside and clean the guns. This is the work part of it all. But at least it is all indoors and warm.

Well, not bad stuff to do on a New Year's Day. But it is lunch time and time to go to Grandmother's for our black eyed peas and collards. She might have a few other things as well!

Happy New Years!!!

Posted via email from MartinFarm